A few months ago, I decided to leave my job. Since this was a significant life milestone, we thought we would look at the projections and see where we would be financially if we both just moved down to Mexico. We needed to sell our house in Oakland for the money to build, but the market was hopping and it was a good time to sell. Since it would be so much cheaper to live down there, could we just move? This was about 5 years earlier than our soonest expected date, but why not take a look?

Since I can’t really do my job remotely, I put together three models (yes, more spreadsheets):

• We both quit our jobs and move – the “cold turkey” option
• I quit my job, we both move and my husband continues to work remotely
• We stay in the Bay Area and work for another year

Spreadsheets are a handy tool, but they don’t factor in emotions. When faced with the numbers, it was obvious that there was a fourth model: us splitting up. We could see that me working for another year was significantly more comfortable financially. We wanted to make sure we had enough savings to buffer for unexpected house building costs. The kicker was that our builder was ready this summer and if we waited a year, he may be occupied with another job (he only does one at a time).

So, the only way we could think of to make everything happen, was to split up. I would get another job and work in the Bay Area and my husband would go down to Mexico, get residency and get the house started. We’re now a couple months into that plan; is everything is peachy? Not really, but I’ll get into that in my next post.